


Under the Visiting Moon

by AParisianShakespearean



Series: Dragon Age One Shots [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Angst With A Bittersweet Ending, Death, Extreme Sorrow, F/M, Heavy Angst, Loss, Mortal Wounds, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 13:52:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11899104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AParisianShakespearean/pseuds/AParisianShakespearean
Summary: What will happen, if he leaves her?





	Under the Visiting Moon

When they told her, her cry pierced the heavens. _He doesn’t have much time…I’m sorry my lady but—_

_No. No._

It isn’t true, this won’t be the end, but even as she falls to the ground, she sees the bloom of red pouring from the bandage, and she knows.  
What did she tell him, that day? That morning that they two of them awoke in his bed, after being together for the first time? He told her that she was his second self, and in return, she told him he was her second self. She promised him, she would love him for the rest of her days. They couldn’t be married, not with the way the world was. But that was their promise. Their vow.

And now…

No. No.

_Maker, let him live. Let him live._

“Cullen…” she murmurs, and gently he wipes the tears that fall. “Don’t leave me.”

Once, she saw eternity in his eyes. Yet when he holds her face in his hands, and when his amber eyes meet with hers, she sees that eternity become something tangible. She sees the life they would build free of the Inquisition, a home in South Reach near Mia, Branson, and Rosalie. She sees Cullen playing chess with his nephew, and she sees the two of them making a new life. Rebuilding. She sees the children. Their children.

She looks into his amber eyes, and sees that eternity lost.

“Please don’t leave me,” she implores once more, pressing kisses everywhere she can. His hands, his wrists, every part of his face.

“I don’t want to leave.”

“Then stay…”

“I wish…I wish I could.”

His tears mingle with her tears as they kiss. Her kisses are pleas, wishes that her lips could make time go back. Go back so she didn’t foolishly go after that Red Templar in the Wilds. If she didn’t do that, he wouldn’t have had to save her. He wouldn’t have—

“This is all my fault,” she weeps. “If only I hadn’t…”

“No,” he says. “It’s not.”

“Cullen if I never came to you that day… If I never said I wanted to be with you, then maybe…”

He recoils a little from the pain, yet still he lifts her chin up, brushes away the tears that stream down even as his own fall. “Oh love,” he mutters. “That…that hurt more than the sword. Do you…do you remember what I told you, that day I took you to the lake? I told you I should have died during the Blight, or Kirkwall. But I made it back here. I made it…to you. I would relive every step, even knowing it led to this…because you’re…you’re the most beautiful thing that’s ever been in my life.”

“Cullen…”

“No. Please don’t cry. I want…I want to see your smile. My beautiful, wonderful force of nature.”

He smiles when that elicits a small giggle, as she recalls the first time he ever called her that, during the first time they made love. She takes his hand again, threads his fingers with her own.

“I wish…I wish I had more time…” he says.

“I didn’t know I wasn’t alive, before you,” she whispers to him. “Cullen…you made me so alive…I don’t know what I’ll do without—”

“Live for me,” he pleads. “Promise me.”

How can she? She was breathing before him, but not alive. If this truly…

“Please. I want…I want…”

Slowly, she kisses him again. She kisses him, and it is her promise. It is all she can do.

Gently, she rests her head on his chest, and he runs his fingers through her hair, smooths the errant strands away from her face.

“Tell me a story,” he says, after the moments pass.

She often asked him for stories from old Ferelden, just as he used to ask his mother. It makes her smile, and she asks what story he would like to hear.

“Tell me the story of…how we met,” he says. “How you fell in love with me.”

“Well,” she begins, a small smile forming on her lips. “I didn’t know when we first met, how much you would mean to me. I never knew I could fall in love like this, or that I could even find something beautiful in this darkness. But I did. Cullen…I did. I did. I saw you that day by the rift…and you…Maker your ears blushed when I asked you about chastity vows.”

The laugh that comes makes him cry out, and she quickly rises and brings the rag coated in elfroot to his wound, trying to ease it. He places his hand on top of hers, a silent continue.

“I…I thought, as the days wore on…how brave you were,” she begins again. “Kind. Poised, even as outnumbered as you were with Leliana, Josephine, Cassandra and I. When you found me and carried me from the snow to safety, I never felt safer. And when you told me you cared about me, I hadn’t ever felt joy like that. Every step I have taken…it was because you were also there with me. Then, when you told me you loved me…I…I soared.”

He kisses her hand. “I will always love you.”

“I know,” she answers. “Cullen…I…”

“Hold me.”

He strokes her hair as she wraps her arm around him. “I love you,” she tells him. “I love you, and I love you, and—”

“Live, my love,” he whispers, and as she holds him, as she can feel his heart wane, she weeps, the Arbor Wilds standing testament, knowing as she knows.

There is nothing else that is remarkable under the visiting moon.

 

* * *

 

 

She stands alone, outside the balcony of her quarters, the Inquisition waiting for her.

So many things they shared there, her and Cullen.

She can feel him, with her. If he was there he would hold her, press kisses everywhere, tell her how the battle is over now, and she’s alive, she’s alive, and he loves her, and nothing can tear them apart.

She breaks, falling to the ground.

This is how it will always be. The pain, never truly leaving her. Yet still, she must live.

The moon is high in the sky, and as she lifts herself up, she remembers how she thought after he laid limp in her arms, how there was nothing yet remarkable under the visiting moon.

She thought that, yet then, she did not know.

Once she looked in Cullen’s eyes and could see eternity. She thought the eternity ended, the day that he left her.

But he didn’t leave her. Not really, and she knows that when she holds their child in her arms for the first time, she will see that eternity again. She will keep his promise, and she will no longer be simply breathing. Once more, she will be alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt. This was inspired by a line in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. At the end when Antony dies, Cleopatra says "there is nothing more remarkable under the visiting moon."  
> Sorry for the extreme sorrow. Currently have a WIP where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.


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